Bruce Springsteen has already begun his follow-up to last year's Wrecking Ball collection. Springsteen recently headed into the studio with the E Street Band while on tour in Australia, along with Steven Van Zandt's temporary sub, guitarist Tom Morello. Springsteen told Rolling Stone, "We've never had a recording session during a tour in our lives. We did a couple of things that I wanted to put down. So that was very exciting. And being with Tommy was exciting. The band -- Steven, Nils (Lofgren), all those guys -- continues to be a source of inspiration for me." He added: "I have stuff I'm working on that I'm very happy about. I hate to say, because I don't like to be wrong. But I have a lot of material. I still feel like I'm in the middle of the well."

Springsteen, who was renown for laboring over new albums for years on end, has recently been releasing new music on a schedule closer to the way most artists work: "I always used to say, in the past decades, that I wanted to make more records -- and I've done that. I struggled through the '90s. (The E Street Band) weren't playing together and I didn't know how we sounded on record. (Producer) Brendan O'Brien gave us that gift. It gave us a rebirth and inspired me, I believe, to write more songs. Of course, it was a decade with an awful lot going on in the United States and elsewhere."

"The Boss" went on to say that the momentum the band has on the road will carry over to the post-tour album sessions: "It's ongoing. A week or two later, after stopping, I'm in the studio working, making a demo. You stop the performing for awhile, because this level of intensity. . . You need a break from it. But this has been a great, tremendously rewarding period of our time together. This has been the best ten, twelve years we've ever had."

2012's Wrecking Ball was Springsteen's sixth studio album in a decade -- fast work when you consider that it was only his 17th studio album in his then-39-year recording career: "At this point in my life, it's not a tortuous process anymore, y'know? The songs have come pretty easy for quite a few years now -- so do making the records. We make the records in a month. (In) my little demo studio first and that takes a couple of hours, y'know, a song. When I was young I thought I had to give my life completely over to it or I wasn't gonna be able to get anything good out. Now (I realize) it was sort of an excuse (laughs) 'cause I didn't know what else to do with myself. But now I realize it takes the right amount of time. In other words, you have to work at it until it's right -- but you don't have to work at it any longer than that."

Longtime friend and bandmate Steve Van Zandt told us that in all of his travels he's never encountered an artist or performer even close to Bruce Springsteen: "He's an exception to almost any rule. Y'know, anybody that follows the pattern of his sort of career choices is doomed (laughs) to failure -- I promise you, okay? It's not like. . . He is completely unique in what he can pull off -- and you get used to that."

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band will next perform on Thursday (June 27th) in Gijon, Spain.